I am standing with a friend in the garden of her house watching her children play when her four-year-old pushes off the top of a slide and deliberately slams into the back or his 18-month-old sister who is yet to clear the bottom. His mother is angry; she takes him aside.

“Why did you do that?” she asks.

This response is so common and we have heard it used so often that we have probably never thought what a very strange question it is. How is the child supposed to respond? Both of us had seen the deliberation on her son’s face when he pushed off with sole intention of hurting his sister. It is not difficult to work out that jealousy was the motive for this behaviour.

There is only one honest answer possible: “Because I wanted to,” but my friend did not really want to hear the truth; in fact, if the child had said this, my friend would have been horrified.

Scene three

Gradually all memory of the child coming from another planet is lost and the problems start. The parents begin to mistakenly assume that the Mercury’s child has, or should have, the same way of looking at the world as they do.   Earth parents understand that the child has to learn to become an Earth adult, but think this knowledge is gained along with the Earth language.

They do not realise that the creature from Mercury still retains his original Primary Mercurian view of the world and that view has to be trained away.   Parents need to remember that Mercurian behaviour for a baby is instinctive survival behaviour, which works because it has to work.   Toddlers have no mechanism for knowing when demanding is no longer needed.   They will only leave it behind when it stops working, and if it continues to work they continue the behaviour.

Mercury’s child has no power to control whether this child behaviour is effective; only parents can stop Primary Mode behaviour from working.

The confusion begins when the Mercury’s child starts to learn to speak Earth language.   The Mercurian way is to demand, and the child needs to be shown by continuous example that asking works but demanding does not.   The often-heard entreaty to the toddler,   “Say please”   is no mere sweet old-fashioned tradition.   The parent puts something in between the demand and its supply, the request and its gratification.   Here should begin the mantra that parents should hold onto well into the child’s teens.

Give them what they want but under your terms.

This is crucial if the child is to leave behind its Primary Mode “demand” behaviour. “Please” and “thank you” mean that a calm non-aggressive action has to be performed before the need is met.

Mercury’s child continually asks his or her parents for reasons but does not really set much store by them; they are merely words.   The child is only really influenced by what actually ends up happening—in other words, consequences.   Mercury’s child may become old enough to be capable of reasoning but will never let words or reason stop him or her from fighting for what he/she wants.

Life-forms everywhere survive by controlling consequences.   Mercury’s children are no different; for them there is only one priority: to get the outcome they want.   Coming to Earth and learning how to talk does not change this.   If they discover that a particular action brings them what they want they repeat it.   The Mercurian child is never changed through the use of reason but only by the very careful control of outcomes, by giving them predictable consequences.

Therefore, it is not possible to persuade Mercury’s child of anything.   They will never be persuaded that what they want to do at this minute is not in their long-term best interest.   They will never accept that they should not want to do it.

Earth parents often mistakenly think they can persuade their children by just using words, and without any other consequence, of the greater maturity of the adult Earth view.   This is just not possible.   Mercury’s child only appears to be persuaded by this argument.   In reality all he or she can ever really accept is the inevitability of the outcome.   If the outcome is inevitable they will not just accept it but accept it happily.

Men and women may be from Mars and Venus but children are very definitely from Mercury.   They are mercurial, developmentally designed to be interested in now—this precise moment.   As parents we love our child so much we are sure that they know it.   We are sure that they will understand why we have to disappoint them.   When we have to tell them…

· now is the time to go to bed

· no, you can't have the cake two minutes before dinner

· you have to stop what you are enjoying and come in now

· your homework needs to be done now

· what you just said was rude and must not be repeated

We are sure they will trust us enough to accept disappointment.   But Mercury’s children are inexperienced and egocentric.   They are never going to be convinced that our bedtime for them on a school night is reasonable.   It is dishonest to hint that we will ever accept their time since—unless it accords with our own—we will not.   Functioning families only appear to get mutual agreement in these areas.   Mutual agreement in these areas would mean that a child’s view had a chance of being accepted even though it was unhealthy or unsafe.

Don’t expect them to want to do it.

Our children are reluctant to accept our long-term reasons and we often cannot accept their now reasons, but when the Mercurian view of the world does not coincide with ours, it is quite possible to get our children to agree to do it.

What is not fair or realistic (in fact it is cruel and unnecessary) is to expect them to agree, against all their Mercurian instincts, that they should want to do it.

It is natural for Earth parents to use reason with their children and to want agreement in areas of dispute.   It is right that they explain their reasons to their children, but only up to a point.   This desire becomes counter-productive when Earth parents think the child’s agreement is more important than his or her compliance.   The uncomfortable truth is worth repeating that often when Mercury’s child appears to accept our argument and appears to agree, he or she has just accepted that they cannot change the outcome, that the outcome is inevitable.

Look at the difficulties this parent gets into by attempting to get agreement:

My son will be eleven this year.   He is not badly behaved at school and doesn't cause his teachers any problems.   The problem we have is at home with his defiance!   For example, he doesn't think it is fair that he has to do homework, as he works for six hours at school and doesn't see why he has to do more work in his free time (his words!).   He finds it difficult to do his homework, and his concentration span is approximately five minutes.   If we try to force him to do it we are looking at least an hour or two of battling and then he gets himself in a state and doesn't do it properly anyway.

After two hours of verbal battling with this Mercurian child, the parent is no nearer to getting this problem resolved.   It is clear, since he quotes his son’s reasons, that this father wants his son’s agreement. This is the wrong target, because the words insist and agree are not compatible.   The father cannot insist on something that he wants his son to agree to. He certainly cannot punish his child for not agreeing.   If agreement is the target, this obstinate child becomes invincible, and the father is stripped of the moral right to provide consequences.

The real target is not agreement but his son’s compliance.   This father has completely failed to make clear what the consequence will be if his son does not complete his homework.   He can’t even mention consequences while he is seeking agreement.

Children in dispute are interested only in outcomes.   The outcome for this child is that he has not done his homework properly, which is what he wanted in the first place.   So he has got what he wanted without any consequence being applied.   His father’s angry attention is not punishing, because attention, even negative attention, is rewarding.   Doing or not doing homework should be a non-negotiable area, but it is the father, not the son, who continues to negotiate and who has not accepted that homework is non-negotiable, and this is the reason the father is frustrated.   He cannot work out if the fault lies with his ability to explain or his son’s willingness to understand.

Truth is, there is no fault—at least not here.   If you look you will see that the father states exactly his son’s position, although he does not accept that his son is entitled to believe this. This is why the interactions are never-ending.   The son is perfectly entitled to believe he should not have to do homework and the father should respect his view.   His son is not entitled not to do it and only really needs one piece of information from his father—what the consequences will be.

Mercury’s child needs consequences.   Not only as a means for parents to make sure the adult view of child behaviour prevails but because when children are trained to accept small consequences for their own inappropriate child behaviour they are being trained to accept—not dwell on—the natural disappointments that life brings without getting angry or blaming others.  Without the positive loving application of consequences children will firstly behave badly towards others and secondly will blame others for any disappointment, including those stemming from their own bad behaviour.  Without training to accept consequences children revert to—or fail to leave—their Primary Mode behaviour.  They continue to say right on into their teenage years and beyond,   “I do not feel good—I demand—make me feel better.”